Archive | Experts

Dr James Davies is interviewed today in The Daily Telegraph about a questionnaire used by doctors to diagnose depression and anxiety in the UK. “These forms have a very low criteria for anxiety and depression’” says Davies. “Millions of people have filled them and in and got medication, but did they know they were developed by […]

Dr James Davies writes: On Wednesday 11th May, CEP brought into the heart of Westminster some of the leading figures in critical psychiatry to discuss the link between rising mental health disability claims and rising psychiatric prescriptions. Hosted by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence, for which CEP provides the secretariat, the event […]

The Daily Mail today publishes two articles describing the devastating and often deadly impact of psychiatric drugs. In the first piece, Cochrane Collaboration co-founder Prof Peter Gøtzsche details the findings of his new book, Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial (2105). “More than 80 million prescriptions for psychiatric drugs are written in the UK every year,” says Gøtzsche. […]

Dr James Davies writes: For the last 30 years those of us critical of the overprescribing and harms of psychiatric medications have been on the losing side, in the face of a powerful industry-backed medical model that has crowded out alternative voices and visions. The real importance of Wednesday’s Maudsley Debate is that it symbolised […]

The BMJ today publishes an article by CEP member Professor Peter Gøtzsche, in which he claims that the long-term use of psychiatric medication is causing more harm than good. The article is timed to co-incide with a Maudsley Debate which will be held today on the same topic. More than half a million people aged above […]

Following its launch last year and the subsequent criticism of its position by prominent psychiatrists in the The Times and The Lancet Psychiatry, the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry (CEP) responded by issuing a challenge to its critics to engage in an open, public debate on psychiatric drug harm. Taking up this challenge, the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London […]

The latest prescription figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre show that the UK is in the midst of a psychiatric drug epidemic. Over 57m prescriptions for antidepressants were issued in England in 2014, enough for one for every man, woman and child. This represents a 7.5% increase since 2013, and over 500% […]

Professor Peter Gøtzsche has won first prize in the 2014 BMA book awards in the Basis of Medicine Category with his most recent book, ‘Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare’, published by Radcliffe Publishing. Peter is Director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre and a member of CEP. The BMA reviewer commented as […]

Michael Enright of Canadian CBC Radio interviews Robert Whitaker, author of ‘Anatomy of an Epidemic’, on The Sunday Edition: http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/features/2014/06/08/robert-whitaker-on-psychiatric-drugs/